I.
I only knew Boklevsky's third wife.
Regarding the previous two a tale was going around- if 'tale' is a fair description for a vile, shameless bit of slander that entwines itself around, sticks onto and darkens people's minds, poisoning those that are pure and bringing welcome nourishment to those that are base.
There was much nasty talk about how these two women came to die.
"Bluebeard!"
The facts of the case were out in the open. Boklevsky married a young girl out of a family that had a good name but was come down in the world. This detail is particularly important as it excludes any possibility of hinting at that common-or-garden crime that a malevolent mind might commit along the way to marrying a woman's wealth.
Boklevsky himself was a man of some means and able to live comfortably without needing to work or earn money.
His marriage to this first wife, Nina, lasted only half a year.
Before the wedding and during those first months of marriage she had notably flourishing health, had never had a serious illness and it did seem as though this vigorous young thing was destined to live a long life. But soon this young woman began to grow pale and thin, more and more often she was consulting doctors. She died then of anaemia and complete exhaustion.
Those who knew her had difficulty recognising in this skeleton wrapped with skin lying in a coffin that Nina who only recently had been so full of life.
The second wife, Vera, went to her own mournful end in the same way, almost to the letter, as the first.
Her death, in the second year of their marriage, was due to the same causes: anaemia and exhaustion.
In the illness of these two women, dying well before their time, doctors did not see anything extraordinary or inexplicable.
"Similar cases, where completely healthy girls, on entering into life as a married woman, die of a marasmus, are recorded in the annals of medicine."
"But what is the underlying cause in these cases?" people from Boklevsky's circle asked the doctors.
"In the life of a young woman marriage will always present itself as a fateful moment, one that strikes her entire organism. On some this has no greater effect than a short-term loss of vigour. This does soon return, often bringing with it an added bloom, marking the appearance of a new creature- a woman. For other natures the upheaval proves to be too great: the girl dies without turning into a woman. Cases have been observed where the exact opposite happens. Anaemic girls suffering from that vague ailment, once known as 'greensickness', on being joined in marriage made a complete recovery and within a year or two it was impossible to recognise them, so great was the difference between the spent girl and this woman, wife and mother so full of life and health. This would seem to bear out that advice often given by old-fashioned doctors in cases of anaemic young misses: 'Might be time for her to get married.'"
"Do you not think, Doctor, that the reason for the death of Boklevsky's two wives might be a disease on his part? Consumption, for example?"
"You are thinking as a layman does. Do you seriously believe that before making his diagnosis a doctor does not entertain a hundred, a thousand suggestions, that he does not form hypotheses? But this is not a field for imagination. Needed here are facts and more facts, precise observations, microscopic and chemical analysis. I treated both of Boklevsky's wives, time and again calling in other doctors for their opinion. Leading practitioners were consulted. The husband himself underwent a thorough examination. Rest assured that everything was done, any explanation possible in the particular case was looked into. Neither tuberculosis nor any other chronic wasting disease was detected."
So the men of science did not explain away the fateful mystery that those looking on were seeing.
The rumour mill wanted, at any cost, to find some crude, dirty causation. They began saying that Boklevsky treated his wives appallingly and, so to speak, 'hounded them into their graves'.
They cited unquestionable proofs of the brutality of this husband who did not shrink back from beating such tender, such blameless wives.
II.
All of this was known to me when I became acquainted with Boklevsky. But I have learned not to believe everything that is considered to be a universally acknowledged truth.
And I began to look for myself at this man come to notoriety as a 'Bluebeard'.
Boklevsky, a tall, lean, fair-haired man of around 38, did not strike one as being a carrier of disease or a psychopath. On the contrary he was, to all appearances, a normal person without any individual peculiarities. Put simply, this was a man who was decent and behaved properly, was not particularly intelligent but by the same token no fool. While not making a show of his wealth he did reveal the habits of a person who was never in want of money. Everything about him was even, balanced, with not a single telling brush stroke- a figure sketched by nature using mediocre materials that are prone to becoming dull. His conversation was simple and to the point- narrow in compass, neither going into any depth nor aiming for any great heights.
He had need of my services as a lawyer for a certain civil action. I do not remember how we came to be on friendly personal terms but it was soon normal that he would ask me to stay on a little after our professional dealings were concluded, have coffee and cognac brought to his study and treat me to expensive cigars. Much of the time he would listen to me but sometimes he would talk himself of this and of that.
But one evening I noticed that there was something strange and unsettling about him. His eyes. His greenish, watery eyes were continually lighting up with golden sparks and this glimmering light they had drew attention to the fact that we, those around him, did not know everything that was to be known about this person. There was in him something that was to us mysterious, hidden, secret.
So I was looking at him with particular curiosity. With a trembling hand and more quickly than was his wont he poured from the bottle and, raising his glass, was in a hurry to drink.
"You may congratulate me," he said suddenly, as if casting himself headlong into a chasm. "I am to be married. The wedding will be happening shortly. I wanted to ask you to be my best man."
At this point I did think on all that I had heard previously about this widower twice-over and I had a sort of feeling that some kind of dark deed was in preparation and that I was going to be drawn in as an accomplice.
But I was sitting in the study of a wealthy client on furniture tout comme il faut, was smoking a fragrant cigar and was myself dressed in that elegant manner which changes a man into an '&c.', an 'etc.' an 'and so on'.
I simply asked, not too loudly, in a calm voice that was, nevertheless, replete with an inner dignity:
"You are to marry a young lady?"
He was positively beaming and those eyes of his blazed like bright stars.
"A girl, a wonderful, pure young woman!"
Agitated he stood up and began to pace the carpet that was covering the floor of his study.
"Twice I have suffered misfortune. I think of my two late wives with love and with a deep gratitude. What wonderful women they were, how greatly they loved me. And did I not love them as much? I was ready to give my soul for one kiss, one caress."
For a time Boklevsky was silently pacing the distance between the writing desk and the fireplace.
"I am a... an unusual person. If I do not have a youthful female presence in my vicinity then I am deeply unhappy. You should not think that I am particularly passionate... that I love women madly or something like that. Not at all! The nearness of a woman is an organic necessity to me. I turn cheerful, different, brighter, look at everything in a better way. I feel myself a human being. I feel that I am alive. In solitude I die away. I shall not be able to make you understand this precisely. It is beyond my powers. When I am alone I feel how my force is steadily quitting me, how I am withering... I ask your pardon, I cannot find the words. Imagine a soil that is capable of bearing crops but that is barren after a long drought. What is needed is a wholesome, revitalising fall of rain. Without it this black earth is merely dust and sand. For me a woman is just such a rain, bringing life into a valley of death and infusing a parched mummy with blood and vital fluids. A young, pure, untouched creature..."
There was nothing frightening in what he was saying but I was frightened, terrified unto nausea. I had a heavy, dull feeling all through my body and a quiet voice was saying: 'this one will die too.'
How? Why?
I saw vaguely before me the long, lean frame of this fair-haired man, approaching his fortieth birthday, who was so determinedly seeking the company young women, was craving the constant presence of such a one. What could I accuse him of? Had I a reason to hate, fear or despise him? He, a bachelor, had a desire for warmth, the touch of a female hand, family life. Twice he had known happiness only to lose it. He was hoping to find a lasting happiness on this third occasion...
So I agreed to be best man. In the church, standing behind him holding the crown above his head, I had a sideways look at the wonderful figure of a young bride, bashful, almost expiring in the anticipation of her new life...
In their second year of happy, married life this wife also fell ill. I was a friend of the family, always with a place at their table. I knew all the details of their daily lives. A milder, more loving and indulgent husband I had never seen. He created around his wife an atmosphere of love and kindness, never leaving her in solitude, anticipating her every wish. After a year he still had the same look of love in his eyes as during those first days after the wedding. And she, joyous and happy, was bathing in the sunshine of his affection. Often I would compare her to a child frolicking in the warm bed of its mother, to a woman abandoning herself on a warm day to the loving touch of the sea's waves beneath a caressing southern sun...
She fell ill!
She began to lose weight and grow pale. She lost her bloom, her cheeks became pallid and sunken. Pitifully, morbidly her collar-bones stood out revealing hollow pits about her neck. Her eyes, however, grew larger, sick and suffering, imploring a grace, the return of that health she had so recently enjoyed but filled with fear, already seeing plainly that the end was fast approaching...
Boklevsky's third wife, Nadezhda, like his first two, died in the second year of marriage to him.
When I was kissing her forehead in the coffin I found to my horror that this was almost a mummy, having none of the usual clammy feel of a corpse. It was as though I was kissing not a dead person but a mannequin made of celluloid...
Boklevsky went away to travel abroad. And he disappeared out of my life.
Strange rumours reached me from distant parts. There, taking advantage of different laws with regard to marriage, he had married again and, apparently, his wife had died and, apparently, he had yet again entered into matrimony... About eight years passed. The rumours about Boklevsky had long since died down and no one was interested in him any more.
It did rekindle a good deal of the interest about town to hear that Boklevsky, now gravely ill, was travelling to his family's estate. He was coming back from abroad to die in his native country.
This story was confirmed and a short time after it was known that Boklevsky, along with a Japanese doctor, was already back living in the old house of the Spass-Kolino estate.
I went in all haste to visit him.
I hardly recognised in the skeletal body lying in that bed the once lively, if always spare, Boklevsky.
And what I found most striking: the expression in his eyes was frightened, imploring for help just like that of his third wife before her death.
The touch of his skin caused me to shudder. His too-warm hand seemed not to be of flesh and blood but something artificially created. As though it were of wood, covered with something. A dry, papery skin, I would call it.
Indeed all of him was dry. A body that was deprived of moisture, drained of its vital fluids. Taking advantage of a moment when the sick man had fallen asleep I had a quiet word with the doctor.
"What is afflicting him?"
With his cunning, black eyes the Japanese looked at me and a row of white teeth shone in his dark face.
"In Europe you will not want to believe this but Boklevsky is suffering from a rare disease that is known to us in the East. It is caused by a particular microbe- a mummifying bacillus. In his many travels he must have become infected. His body is slowly but surely drying out to form a mummy. The effect of this bacillus was known in ancient times. You may preserve a corpse, a piece of organic matter, whatever you wish, if they are exposed to the action of a fluid in which this bacillus has been cultivated. Honey serves as its source of sustenance. This is why king Herod, having killed his wife in a fit of anger and then with bitter regret wishing to preserve her corpse, laid it in glass coffin filled with honey and kept it in his palace for a long time. Boklevsky will end his life having become a mummy and I am convinced that if you were to dig him up after ten years he would still be exactly as he was at the moment of his death."
I told the Japanese of the mysterious death of Boklevsky's wives.
"Well, that is not difficult to explain. He infected them with the mummifying bacillus and, being weaker organisms, they died sooner of it."
This was how science explained the mystery of our 'Bluebeard' who, himself, died a short time after this and was laid to rest in his family crypt.
* * *
I have long since given up my law practice and live a solitary life in Saint Petersburg, at the edge of the city. I am member of a society that investigates esoteric learning and dares to transgress the limits set to human reason. I, a seeker, know as yet so little. Finding once an auspicious moment I, as querent, put a question to Meon.
"Learned Master, tell me what is your explanation for the enigmatic deaths of Boklevsky's wives?"
Having listened to my story Meon grew sombre.
"My child, you came very close to one of the most awful creatures that, by our good fortune, very rarely appear upon the physical plane. Man is an astral being in a physical shell. When a man dies his physical shell decomposes. But also upon the astral plane something resembling a physical death occurs. The essence throws off its astral shell and proceeds into the third- the mental plane. But the shell cast off by the soul does not disappear. It seeks, rather, a new embodiment and in a few cases it attains this goal. In this event the human-vampire is brought into being. This is a creature that is capable of living only at the expense of others. This creature, unseen and unfelt, sucks the vital fluids from women, if it is male, from men, if it is female. Boklevsky was a vampire."
This was how the mystery of Boklevsky and his unfortunate wives was explained to me by a leading light of the occult sciences...
This must be why I feel such horror, such a chill in my mind when I see that my wife is losing weight and growing pale. And alongside of my dread of losing her an inner voice is saying to me:
'Everyone is a vampire. All of us suck the life-fluids from others and live at the expense of their force, their health. We all live by way of undetected murder. And life itself is a flower that through its roots is feeding upon a corpse.'
Sergei Solomin (real name Sergei Yakovlevich Stechkin, 1864-1913), first published in 1912. Original text